Prendergast steps away from Amtrak's review of Penn Station concourses

The rethinking of Penn Station’s above-ground operations will have to happen without Tom Prendergast.

Amtrak confirmed Thursday that Prendergast, the former chairman and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, had stepped back from the assignment.

Story Continued Below

“Mr. Prendergast was originally commissioned to independently review the interaction, coordination and collaboration between the railroads’ various passenger concourses within Penn Station,” Amtrak spokeswoman Christina Leeds, said in a statement. “However, due to ethics obligations related to his prior tenure at MTA [Long Island Rail Road], Mr. Prendergast will not be able to take the lead on assisting Amtrak.”

She provided no further detail.

In his stead, Amtrak will hire an “expert consultant team, with both NYC and international experience, to carry out the analysis and consider options to improve the concourse operations,” Leeds said.

Prendergast had no comment.

But Amtrak is losing a person with gravitas to help it rethink Penn Station amid its so-called “summer of hell,” the planned closure of several tracks within Penn Station to make emergency repairs — a program that has so far turned out to be less hellish than expected for NJ Transit, LIRR and Amtrak riders.

Amtrak owns Penn Station, but shares operational control of its concourses with NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road. The railroads have a reputation for territoriality.

In April, Amtrak commissioned Prendergast, who earlier in his career ran the LIRR, to review the way the companies manage their overlapping passenger facilities.

His appointment came in the aftermath of a stampede that occurred on a particularly unpleasant evening, when hundreds of commuters got stuck on a Penn Station-bound train beneath the Hudson River. With delays mounting and crowds swelling in the station concourses above, a police taser prompted false reports of gunfire. That, in turn, prompted commuters to course through the station, dropping briefcases and backpacks in their wake.

The episode contributed to the feeling that Penn Station was in crisis.

Prendergast’s task, one soon to be taken up by the unnamed private consultants, was, the railroad said, to “focus on the current methods of managing daily operations within the station concourses, including during disruptions, events or incidents,” and find ways to improve coordination and the passenger experience, which many would these days call dismal.

How much any review would actually matter is a subject of some debate.

It's relatively meaningless, unless the reviewer “has the ability to actually make capital improvements” to the station, said Tom Wright, president of the Regional Plan Association.